Saturday, December 13, 2003

Wal-Mart In The Rhineland I'll admit -- I like Wal-Mart.  I know it is evil.  I know it destroys small town businesses and wrecks mainstreets from Des Moines to Berlin.  But there's just something comforting about walking into a store and being confronted by the familar yellow smiley face warning you to beware of falling prices.  You just don't get that level of thoughtfulness from say, Best Buy. Today I finally visited a German Wal-Mart.  It actually took a bit of effort to locate the place.  Germans aren't big on billboards, so roadside advertising usually takes the shape of very small signs and arrows pointing in the general direction of where you want to go.  But I knew the Wal-Mart I wanted was near the Homburg train station, so I drove around that area until I stumbled across it. It was good to see the Wal-Mart Supercenter logo again.  Hadn't seen that up close and personal since the night before leaving Eagle Pass.  I quickly ventured inside and started making a nuisance of myself by taking lots of pictures.  Yes, I got stared at.  But I just pretended I had a fetish dealing with discounted exercise equiptment, and they gave me a wide berth. Though the inside looked quite a bit different from an American Wal-Mart, the signs still looked the same (except for them being written in German), and the employees had on the exact same blue vests.  I didn't see any elderly greeters by the door, though.  Damn, I miss them. Just like any Supercenter in the United States, grocery shopping is easily done.  At this Wal-Mart you can get beverages, including milk in little white cartons (or brown bottles -- not too sure if I'll ever have the guts to try that), all the bread you can eat, and sausage in every size, taste, and color. But unlike any other Wal-Mart I've ever been in (and believe you me, I've been in more Wal-Marts than your average redneck), this one has escalators.  Food and household items downstairs.  Clothing and electronics upstairs. You can even find some school supplies if you look hard enough. And once you've found everything that you just can't live one more moment without, you head to the checkout lanes and you're on your way.  Relatively painless, really.  Just so long as you remember that you have to bring your own bags to carry your stuff home in.  I still forget that occasionally when I go to a German store.  Someone really ought to introduce this country to the joys of plastic bags. So there you go:  a German Wal-Mart.  Now those of you back in the states who were dying to see one don't have to make the long trip out.  Maybe next week I'll explore the wonderful world of German roadside toilets. Related sites: Wal-Mart Germany:  official site How Wal-Mart is going to take over Germany, too Wal-Mart Watch:  anti-Wal-Mart site 10:43:36 PM     |

© Copyright 2005 Alex L. Mauldin.